The simplest way is to download one of the source code archives that is released with each major release of the software. These are available at the BZFlag GitHub page. There is an archive of the source code used to build every version of the game. The source archives are provided in Unix line ending format ( .tar.gz and .tar.bz ) as well as Windows line ending format ( .zip ). The archives contain instructions on how to compile the software directly. Additional software such as a C++ compiler will be needed.

The source code for BZFlag is always changing and being developed. The developers keep the current code for the project in a Git repository located at GitHub. Please see the BZFlag Git page for information on how to access the Git repository.

The BZFlag source code is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL license. This means that anyone is free to use and redistribute the software and it's source code, as long as they follow the license. In order to release a version of the software, or a modified version of the software, a user must also release the source code to the software, as well as any changes they have made to the LGPL source code. This is so that others may benefit from the modifications as well.

The BZFlag source code has been open source and hosted by SourceForge since March 2000. Before this the source code was the proprietary property of Chris Schoeneman who began developing the game in 1992 at the Cornell Program of Computer Graphics for the SGI line of graphic workstations.
BZFlag is now currently hosted on GitHub.

BZFlag is in no way related to the commercial game "BATTLEZONE" by Atari, Inc, it was simply inspired by it. They do not share any code or intellectual property.